Placing The Blame

In the music industry and throughout media publications there is a natural habit to try and blame other people for not being successful as artists. People shift the villain role to record labels, people who pirate music, and even the fans, to explain why artists don’t make money. While others do have a major influence on your career blaming anyone but yourself for not being successful is unfair and foolish.

Chances are that record labels have nothing to do with you not succeeding. Unless you wind up signing some terrible multi-record deal that locks you into an agreement that prevents your creativity, it is unlikely that they are stopping your career from going forward. Even if the label does a bad job at properly promoting and selling your music you can take it upon yourself to do this and make sure that your albums do sell. Should you be in a bad deal with a label then chances are it was because you did not do the proper research on their reputation or have a good lawyer review the deal before signing.

Pirating music has been around for over a decade; Napster launched in 1999 and any artists that have yet to be able to adjust to this change in how people get music have no one to blame but themselves. Chances are if no one is buying your music it means that the music is bad or boring. People still buy plenty of music but you have to do something special to convince them it’s worth it, sometimes it’s as simple as putting it out on vinyl or other special packaging. People downloading music for free is something every artists should just accept and learn to adapt to.

The worst thing an artist can do to their fans is blame them for not being supportive enough and saying they were not able to succeed because “The Scene” was not there for them. If there are not people coming to your shows or supporting you it means that you are doing something wrong, not them. Maybe it’s because your band has a bad reputation, maybe you act unprofessional and immature, it could even be that your music is bad and you don’t realize.

If things are not going well in your career then digging in and just blaming everyone else will not help you. The best thing you can do is step back and accept responsibility for this, take a while and think it over, make a new plan and try again.

-Hassan